Witchcraft, Female Aggression, and Power in the Early Modern Community

While a strong consensus has emerged in the last generation about many sociocultural aspects of witchcraft, the role of gender--why witchcraft was particularly but not exclusively associated with women--has remained problematic. This article asserts that women in early modern Europe were thought more likely to be witches because, the evidence suggests, they were in fact more likely to act like witches. Hostility and violence figured prominently in early modern village and small town life, and women resorted to witch-like behaviors ranging from premeditated poisoning and surreptitious assault through ritual malefic magic to spontaneous displays of intense anger because these were effective means of engaging in conflicts that played to their learned and innate strengths while avoiding forms of struggle they were less well equipped for. The article concludes by suggesting that the intervention of the state in the form of widespread and protracted witch prosecutions played a role in inhibiting witch-like practices and behaviors, and since these were utilized far more often by women than men, helped change the perceived "nature" of women from the Medieval notion that they were particularly violent and lustful to the modern image of women as gentle and asexual.